Apple 15-inch MacBook Pro (2017) review: Price & Performance

PROS

Improved performance

Lightweight, slimline design

Innovative Touch Bar

High-quality Retina display

CONS

Expensive

Limited to 16GB memory

No user upgrades or repairs

USB-C connectivity only

2017 Apple’s June WorldWide Developer Conference had more than its fair share of product announcements, including the forthcoming iMac Pro and HomePod smart speaker. But perhaps a more important long-term development was Apple’s belated discovery of virtual reality. If nothing else, the need to embrace VR has forced Apple to admit that Macs just don’t cut it when it comes to the sort of 3D graphics performance required for this emerging technology.

As a result, Apple’s flagship 15-inch MacBook Pro received more than just the expected Kaby Lake speed bump, also benefitting from a significant GPU upgrade.

Price & performance

The MacBook Pro got a major revamp last November, introducing a new, slimmer design, along with the eye-catching Touch Bar, so there’s no significant change to the laptop’s basic design.

The 15.4-inch Retina display offers 2,880-by-1,800-pixel resolution (220.5ppi) and 500-nits brightness, and is both a treat for the eye and well suited to graphics and video-editing work. At 1.83kg and measuring just 15.5mm thick, the MacBook Pro is also impressively slim and light for a laptop that delivers high-end performance.

Processor performance in Geekbench 4 was slightly better than the 2016 BTO model, scoring 4760 for single-core performance and 15,890 for multi-core (compared to 4550 and 14050). Graphics performance was almost identical to last year’s model, reaching 85fps when running the Cinebench R15 OpenGL test, while the AJA storage tests also reported similar scores, with write and read speeds of 2000MB/s and 2500MB/s respectively.

Battery life doesn’t seem to have been affected by the more powerful GPU, still lasting for 7.5 hours when streaming video from BBC iPlayer (with the brightness level lowered to a perfectly watchable 50 percent), so you should certainly be able to get a full days’ work from the MacBook Pro when you’re out of the office.

Of course, the MacBook Pro’s weaknesses remain the same: it’s a professional-level laptop that’s limited to a maximum 16GB of RAM, with no user upgrades or repair options available.